If going “green” means that we all have to buy lots of new stuff, it’s not “green”.

So argues Alec Dubro in an article at The Progressive. The “fuel-efficient car” is the most egregious example:

[T]here are no cars of the future, and the looming catastrophe of global pollution, including climate change, will never be solved by building more cars – efficient or otherwise.

There’s simply no way to preserve our car-centered civilization while at the same time acting decisively to head off catastrophic global warming.

Dubro identifies two problems. The first is a problem of scale. There are over 250,000,000 registered vehicles in the United States. Converting a tiny percentage of them to greater fuel efficiency won’t begin to have any significant impact. Not to mention, where’s the electricity going to come from? If it’s from new coal plants, we’re worse off than before.

And then there’s Jevon’s Paradox. The more efficient you make machines, the more energy they use. Why? Because the more efficient they are, the better they are, the cheaper they are and more people buy them, and the more they’ll use them.

And then there are the systemic and infrastructure requirements to account for, no matter how fuel-efficient a car might be:

Even if we were able to produce a 100 mpg, zero pollution vehicle, we’d still need to maintain the infrastructure of roads, bridges, and energy distribution. That means steel, concrete, asphalt and plastics. Just concrete production alone generates as much as 10 percent of all greenhouse gas. In 2007, the U.S. produced 95 million tons of cement by burning fossil fuels and, according to the EPA, is the third largest source of greenhouse gas pollution in the U.S. (Scientific America, August 7, 2008) The production of asphalt – a petroleum product – also creates carbon. As does the production of motor oil, tires, and on and on.

Much of the pollution involved from the car is not from the tailpipe. It’s from the mining and the manufacturing associated with the car.

Dubro concludes that there is simply no way to maintain both the atmosphere and personal transportation.

Even if the population were frozen at its present level, even if economic growth stopped the sheer number of people wanting – and under the present regime, need – personal transportation makes any plan to reduce car pollution by increasing efficiency is futile. The personal automobile must be abandoned, and quickly.

Dubro’s policy prescription is inescapable. We need, right now, to withdraw our support – financial, political and emotional – from the pursuit of an energy-efficient car.

And to think Dubro reaches this conclusion without even considering peak oil and the energy crisis!